GForceTracker for athletes: a bid against brain trauma

Sports, for all their fun, have left many athletes with disabilities of various sorts related to brain trauma. Different technological efforts have been crafted in a bid against this reality, and one of them is the GForceTracker. The company behind the small sensor has announced that it’s the first to receive Hit Count certification for Hockey and Lacrosse.

The certification was issued by the Sports Legacy Institute, more commonly called SLI, a non-profit founded by Dr. Robert Cantu and Christopher Nowinski back in 2007. Under the non-profit, efforts are made to garner data, prevention, and treatment plans for sports-related brain damage suffered by certain athletes, among others.

The GForceTracker is a small sensor (featured above) that weighs in under an ounce and is described as being about “the size of a domino.” With helmeted players, the sensor can be attached within or outside of the helmet to monitor impacts to the head.

With the gathered data, the system can show how hard an impact is, when an impact is in the danger zone, how many have been sustained, and whether the player may have suffered damage. The data can be gathered for entire teams and on single players.